Results tagged lemon juice from David Lebovitz

Someone recently asked me why I do what I do. More specifically, what compelled me. They were particularly focused on how I was likely most concerned with the finished product, asking me if that was my goal when I cooked and baked. I thought about it for a bit, and realized that the goal has very little to do with it; I like picking through lugs of fruits and berries with my hands, melting chocolate and butter until the mixture is smooth, the smell of folding toasted nuts into a cake batter, and lifting a batch of just-churned ice cream out of the machine and alternating the layers with ribbons of glossy chocolate swirl.

I do, however, have a rather particular thing for scoping out fruit and berries whenever I find them growing and using them to their best advantage. Most of the time, they end up in jams and jellies, especially since I recently returned to the trees which I found overloaded with wild plums a few years ago (which the owners had hacked down to their nubs the following year), which were now gloriously heavy with multicolored fruits of unbelievable goodness. And I spent a good afternoon plucking out the pits and making jam, and a nice tart out of them. Fait accompli!

The words “eggplant” and “jam” together might throw you, but if you stop to consider that eggplant – like tomatoes and squash – are botanically fruits, the idea doesn’t seem all that far-fetched. (Although there are plenty of fruits I wouldn’t advise flavoring with garlic.)

I’ve been on a kick, exploring and enjoying flavors of the Middle East lately. And to take my mind of my rapidly escalating olive oil budget, I was leafing through one of my favorite books, From Tapas to Meze by Joanne Weir, and came across this jam. I’m a big fan of eggplants, which is a good thing since they frequently show up in foods of the Middle East, as well as in dishes of their neighbors in North Africa. And even though I could happily eat my way through all of those countries, luckily in Paris, they’re abundantly available here as well.

I don’t know what possessed me the other day, but there I was, and there it was—I was faced with a big mound of Iceberg lettuce heads at the market, two for one euro, so I bought two of them. Although I don’t eat it very often, I love Iceberg lettuce salad and anyone who says they don’t is probably fibbing.

People will often justify their disdain of Iceberg lettuce on nutritional claims, but in reality, leafy green salads in general doesn’t carry that many nutrients. Think about it; if you steam a plate of those fancy mixed greens, after you get rid of the water and they’re cooked down, it equals about one tablespoon of vegetables. So if you’re looking to get healthy, eat green vegetables like broccoli and asparagus. And since you’re being so prudent, you can allow yourself to bring on the blue cheese and bacon!

The other night I was standing on the métro and found myself face à face with a little affiche advising me, minding my own business as I rocketed below Paris, that it’s not alright to eat Mr. Ed. Then on Tuesday, I was taking a stroll through the thirteenth, on my way to have lunch with a friend in Chinatown, and came across a sign pleading a stop to the practice of le gavage, the forced stuffing of ducks and geese to make foie gras.

A lot of Americans think that all the French are unequivocally daring eaters, or aren’t picky, which is partially true: when you have a dinner party, you don’t have to worry about someone showing up who’s allergic to peanuts or dairy. Aside from a certain American who won’t eat squid, everyone around here eats almost anything, and just about everything might show up on a menu if you get invited to dinner. Except offal, which, in spite of the fact everyone thinks the French like to chow down on stomach lining, testicles, and kidneys, there’s plenty of them that turn up their noses at the idea of digging into a steaming dish of any of the above. btw: In case you invite me over for dinner, I’m with that camp.

For someone who doesn’t drink that much, I sure have a lot of liquor on my liquor shelf. I guess I should rephrase that. For someone who drinks an a lot of wine, but not a lot of liquor, I sure have a lot of liquor on my liquor shelf.

The French don’t have anything on us Americans when it comes to drinking cocktails, although that seems to be changing a bit. Fruity, sweet drinks won’t likely catch on around here, which I’m happy about, but minty Mojitos are popular, fueled on by their love of a fascination with anything Cuban. And one of my commenters got a big laugh out of me when I was explaining in another post the lack of ice cubes in Paris, and she said, “The only time you get a lot of ice in Paris is when you order a cocktail.”

Way back when, after I arrived in France, I wanted to be all Provençal like we thought we were in Berkeley (except you’d need to force me into a beret only at gunpoint)…but I did go off on the lookout in Paris for a large, sturdy mortar and pestle. I didn’t know what they were called in French at the time, so I went into cookware shops, made a fist around some imaginary cylindrical object in front of me, and shook it up and down maniacally and with great vigor to get across the idea of what I was looking for.

Suffice it to say, I got plenty of odd looks—I’m still not exactly sure why, but no one was able to figure out exactly what it was that I was after.

Eventually I got with the program and did find a few pretty little numbers, mortars and pestles usually made of glass or something equally fragile. But for all the pounding in Paris that I planned to do, I needed something that’s going to take it like a man time-after-time and needed to be a bit more rough-and-tumble.

Acting on a tip, finally I arrived home one day with a manly-sized, rock-hard specimen from Chinatown (made of granite) and afterward, I sought a hand from my olive guy who was glad to help out a friend in need and wrapped me up more olives de Nyons than you can shake a stick (or whatever) at, each week at the market.